Netutils-Linux : A Set Of Tools To Simplify Linux Network Troubleshooting And Performance Tuning

by 2daygeek ·
Published : September 6, 2017 || Last Updated: September 6, 2017

As a system administrator, you might know & use few utilities for network troubleshooting and performance tuning but in Linux we have many other options to use (i mean you will get a bunch of utilities for same purpose but each has their own feature which will give you more option for better troubleshooting).

Say hello to netutils-linux is a collection Of utilities to perform network troubleshooting and performance tuning in varies aspect.

This tool automate the whole Linux network performance tuning process out of box. All these utilities doesn’t require root or sudo privileges. So you can install and use them as non-privileged user like top.

1) NetworkTop

All the top utilities are inherited from BaseTop. This utility includes most of the network stack performance metrics and allow users to monitor interrupts, soft interrupts, network processing statistic for devices and CPUs by gathering information from following files /proc/interrupts, /proc/net/softnet_stat, /proc/softirqs, and /sys/class/net//statistic/

$ network-top

2) SnmpTop

The /proc/net/snmp file displays data that is used by snmp agents for IP, ICMP, TCP and UDP monitoring and management. This can help administrators to identify unusual values and thereby identify potential performance problems. In other hands we can say, Basic /proc/net/smmp file watcher.

$ snmptop

3) Irqtop

Irqtop is a part of NetworkTop package. If you want to display only irqs metrics, use the below command. Basically it’s gathering the information from /proc/interrupts file.

This file records the number of interrupts per IRQ. The first column refers to the IRQ number. Each CPU in the system has its own column and its own number of interrupts per IRQ. The next column reports the type of interrupt, and the last column contains the name of the device that is located at that IRQ.

4) SoftnetStatTop

5) LinkRateTop

This utility displays no of packets received/transmitted and errors information based on /sys/class/net//statistic/

$ link-rate

6) Softirqs

This summarizes the time spent servicing soft IRQs (soft interrupts) and soft IRQ event counts (but not times) are available in /proc/softirqs.

$ softirq-top

7) RxBuffers

By default buffering values set for NICs are 256 or 512 bytes. Run the following command to view the capability and the current values of your interface. I could see that both RX and TX values are set to 256 but the interface have the capability of 4096 bytes.